Restoring New York’s Oysters

One solution to this gastronomic problem, proposed by Danielle Kreeger, a marine biologist at Drexel University in Philadelphia, is to grow another kind of shellfish altogether, called the ribbed mussel. Bushek says this type of shellfish isn’t as desirable to eat as oysters but is actually better at filtering water. The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation has also pushed the idea of growing these mussels.

However, oyster proponents like Meredith Comi, oyster program director with the New York/New Jersey Baykeeper project, point out that while mussels are good filterers, they don’t build reefs like oysters. Oysters create reefs when older oysters die and the younger ones take up residence on top of them. Through successive generations, a limestone reef is built up, creating habitat for other marine creatures. The mollusks naturally like reefs because of all the available limestone in the water seeping from the old shells, which they can, in turn, use to build new shells.

The Power of One, The Power of Many

As with many projects so grand in scale, the goal of restoring oysters comes back down to the effort of individual volunteers. Organizers want as many people as possible growing oysters and contributing their efforts to the reef-building project. “We want to overload the system with gardened oysters,” says Comi.

Cervino of the Electric Oyster Project echoes this idea. He sees his work as much a social engineering project as an environmental one. “We want students to be able to use this [beach] as a classroom,” says Cervino. “The goal is to infect other brains so we can create a domino effect.”

Mosher-Smith of the Baykeeper group says that there are probably 30,000 oysters in the water now as part of the project but that it will take “millions and millions” of them to someday contend with the gargantuan task of filtering all the water flowing around and through New York City.

*Correction (October 12, 2008): This sentence originally mentioned the 1963 World’s Fair. The World’s Fair was in fact held the following year, in 1964.